


By the Lakeside after the War

by trahelle



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Don't copy to another site, Drarry, Healing, Hogwarts Eighth Year, Hugging, Implied/Referenced Abuse, M/M, Minor Hermione Granger/Ron Weasley, One Shot, POV Draco Malfoy, POV First Person, Post-Battle of Hogwarts, implied future relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-26
Updated: 2019-02-26
Packaged: 2019-11-05 14:47:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17920862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trahelle/pseuds/trahelle
Summary: After returning to Hogwarts for their eighth year after the Battle of Hogwarts, Draco Malfoy discovers Harry Potter sitting by the Black Lake one night, looking for all the world like he's lost. Struck by the fact that Potter looks as lonely as Draco feels, he returns each night to find him there again, shoes kicked off, book in hand, and blank look on his face. This story is about what happens when Draco finally talks to him.





	By the Lakeside after the War

The old wives’ tale that lightning doesn’t strike the same place twice is verifiably false; I know a man who’s walking refutation of it. 

Sometimes it feels like I’ve spent my whole life studying his face, yet if asked to describe him, I can’t do so definitively. The lines and shape of it war over whether to be sharp or soft, an oblong weight that lends credence to his gaze. His eyes are green fire, life givingly intense in a way that’s at odds with the color. Inky black hair crowns his head, shining as much as it curls, and he has both bronzed skin from his father and freckles from his mother… He’s an amalgamation of parts that don’t belong, yet fit together to form the enigma that is  _ him _ . 

I loved him before I’d ever met him, growing up with stories of  _ “The boy who lived” _ and believing that he was capable of anything. On days my father hurt me, I’d read the story of Harry Potter I’d gotten from Blaise and kept hidden away in my sock drawer. My belief wasn’t foundless, he  _ did _ stop the Dark Lord twice, earning two lightning scars for his trouble, he just couldn’t save me. 

Only five months have passed since the Battle of Hogwarts and only four weeks since we returned to school for an eighth year to finish learning what we couldn’t during a war. A war that I was on the wrong side of, one he saved me from — saved us all. No one’s sure how he did it when it was believed to be impossible, but we’re indebted to him all the same. 

It took only a few days into the start of term when I, haunted by figurative ghosts I feel responsible for creating, began walking the grounds at night unable to sleep in my too empty room. It didn’t take long to find him, sitting on the grass beside the Black Lake, shoes kicked free, a book in hand that he barely looked at, and an empty expression on his face as he gazed out over the lulling waves. 

The emptiness is what struck me. He didn’t used to be like that. Intensity was his one mode of transportation through life. When looking at me, the intensity was hatred; when looking at his friends, it was love and concern. I used to be jealous of them — those who received his love — eyebrows drawn together by concern or the carefree laugher of shared experiences. Now I have no one to be jealous of, he doesn’t seem to look at anyone that way anymore. 

I’ve followed him to the lake every night since the first; I arrive after and leave before him, too. He doesn’t know I’m here, watching from a distance, a mirror of the image he presents: my shoes tossed aside as I sit on the ground. I don’t bring a book or watch the waves, I watch him. 

I’m not sure how I’ve convinced myself that it’s alright for me to be this creepy; maybe because it looks like we’re haunted in the same ways. As I see him stare across the black waters sloshing against the pebbled shore, hair bathed in moonlight and his face in the ghosts of war, I know he’s not okay. I can  _ feel _ it. 

After so many nights, it seems I’ll lose what’s left of my soul if I ignore him in his time of need. No one else is here, maybe it needs to be me. 

I grab my shoes off the ground as I stand, steeling my nerves as I force my feet forward across the damp grasses till I reach him and plop down beside him. If he’s startled, he doesn’t show it. 

“Hullo, Potter,” I say, it comes out both shakier and breathier than I’d like.

“Malfoy — I was wondering when you’d stop by,” he says by way of reply, though he’s still not looking at me. 

His hair, longer than I’ve ever seen it, shields his face from view. I wonder absently if it’s on purpose, but I should get used to the fact that Potter isn’t who he was before the war, he's intentional now. 

“Been sitting here long?” I ask stupidly.

He looks at me then, a small one that’s more of a peek around his curtain of curls than a full look, but he holds it. “I think you know the answer to that,” he says, though the tone lacks any bite. 

I feel hot and scrutinized, which seems strange because it’s me who’s been doing the looking, not Potter. I try for a change of topic, “Do your friends know where you are?” 

“I doubt it,” he says, seeming to wince as he does.

“Why?”

“They’re tongue deep in each other most of the time these days — either yelling or snogging one another senseless — so I doubt they notice much of what’s happening around them.”

“So much so that they don’t know where you are?” I ask, surprised by how frank the admission was.

“We all have our ways of forgetting, though in my case I’m trying to remember.”

“Why are you trying to remember?”

“Because it’s harder than forgetting.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“My memory’s not been the same since that night.”

“What changed?” I ask, astonished that Potter is talking to me about this. 

“There are some side effects of coming back from the dead.”

My breath catches in my throat, an involuntary choking sound. Potter looks at me fully then and I get my first good look at his new face. The moonlight makes the paleness of his new scar stand in stark contrast to his tanned skin; it’s a crash of lightning down the side of his cheek, on the same side as his original. 

It takes me a while to find my voice. “You  _ died _ ? ”

“Voldemort killed me, then Dumbledore gave me a choice and like a fool I came back.”

Suddenly, I’m on my knees in front of him, my hands finding their way to his and taking them in my grasp without conscious thought on my part. I pull them both to my chest. “Please,” I plead in a choked whisper, “ _please_ don’t say that.”

He looks properly astonished and I register that it’s the first real emotion I’ve see on him since returning to school. 

“' _Please_ _don't_ ' what?” he asks in a hoarse voice. His tongue darts out to lick his lips. 

My heart constricts and I continue, desperately hoping to get through to him. “I don’t know what you mean by ‘choice’ or how you returned, but please don’t say you were a fool to come back.” The last words barely make it out as my throat tightens and a stupid tear tumbles down my cheek. I look away.

Potter gives a light tug on his hand, I think he wants me to let go and I drop his like I’ve been holding hot coals and only just realized. Within the span of a heartbeat, I feel him grab mine and tug again, I look at him, while keeping my head turned enough so that he can’t see the wetness on my cheek. 

His eyes are searching me so intensely, I feel utterly exposed. “Do you mean that?” he asks in a voice so quiet I can barely hear him from the increasingly close distance we’re situated in.

“Yes,” I breathe back, my voice equally as quiet, but impossibly more shaken and unsure. I think he’s seeing something I didn’t know was there. 

He goes on looking for long moments; his face holds a question, though I can’t imagine what it is. From one instant to the next, a shift from uncertainty to assuredness comes over his features, and dropping my hands, he lunges at me, arms thrown wide.

I flinch and squeeze my eyes shut, wondering what I did wrong and if I’ve finally gone too far, but it all vanishes the next moment, when I feel him wrap me up in the tightest hug I’ve ever gotten. The unexpected weight of it tips us over and we fall against the damp grasses, tangled in one another.

I didn’t know it was possible to miss something you’d never had before, but it feels like that. Like coming home or finding a place where you’re just yourself and you’re seen and you’re known and you’re loved. How a hug from a practical stranger could feel like this is beyond me, but it does and suddenly Potter doesn’t feel like a stranger anymore. 

My arms tighten around him and our wet cheeks are pressed together; I don’t know which one of us is crying or if it’s both, but I don’t need to. 

Purebloods don’t hug like this; I can’t remember anything more than a light hug with a pat on the back from my mother and my father had never deigned to hug me at all. Even my friends’ hugs have never felt so strong and needy and perfect.

All too soon, Potter pulls back and looks guilty, but he searches my face with a bravery I can’t fathom. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have done that.”

He starts to pull away from me in earnest and I tug him back, “No, you shouldn’t have pulled away.”

A small smile graces his face and he looks at me with those soft eyes I missed for years without knowing it and pulls me close once more


End file.
